The Atlantic: The Changing Ways Parents React to Their Kids Coming Out of the Closet

When Mary Robertson, a sociologist at California State University at San Marcos, interviewed adolescents at an LGBTQ youth center, she was expecting to hear echoes of these stories. Yet the conversations surprised her: While the teens’ lives were far from perfect or conflict-free, they weren’t the tragedies she expected. In some instances, when some kids had come out, their parents in turn came out to them as bisexual. Some were pleasantly surprised by the lack of family drama their revelation caused, despite having worried about getting kicked out of their homes.[...]

Mary Robertson: They were expecting anger. More than one of them expected that they were going to get kicked out of their families, or at the minimum, for it to be a family crisis. And I think some of the most profound findings in the study were hearing from young people who said, “My coming-out story isn’t a tragedy.” That just shows that the expectation is absolutely that it’s going to be bad.[...]

Robertson: It’s important to think about the fact there was no LGBTQ movement prior to the 1970s. It’s a relatively recent thing that we call each other “gay” or “straight.” We’ve been able to kind of see and watch this thing happen in our lifetimes. For the parents of the kids I spoke to, they really didn’t grow up in the context of an LGBTQ movement. But for this generation of kids, it was common parlance. Just that difference of having it be part of your world has a really profound influence on young people today. It broadens the options of how you can name your sexual identity. If [LGBTQ identities are] not even in your realm of thinking or perspective, it’s really that much harder to imagine yourself as a gay person. [...]

Robertson: The study included black, Latino, and white people, and there didn’t seem to be that presence of homophobia based on race. I thought that was profound, that there wasn’t a racialized story about homophobia. I do think that it’s kind of similar to the idea of the rural-urban divide. If you scratch the surface a little bit, I don’t think that’s the story.

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Politico: Warning signs mount for Trump reelection bid

Unlike most of his predecessors, he’s been persistently unpopular, with approval ratings mired in the 40-percent range — so far, he’s the only president in the modern era whose job approval ratings have never been over 50 percent, according to Gallup.

Some of Democrats’ biggest gains came in the states that powered Trump’s Electoral College victory in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And while a president’s base has stayed home in previous midterm elections, leading to losses, the record turnout in this year’s races suggests 2018 was more like a 2016 re-run than Trump voters standing on the sidelines. [...]

Barack Obama’s Democratic Party lost 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats in 2010, but Obama defeated former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012. Republicans flipped both the House, where they netted 52 seats, and Senate in 1994, but Bill Clinton slaughtered former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) in 1996. Ronald Reagan’s GOP lost 26 House seats in 1982 — and picked up a seat in the Senate — but Reagan nearly swept the Electoral College against former Vice President Walter Mondale two years later, winning a 49-state landslide.

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Independent: An unexpected new group, Brexiteers against Brexit, threatens Theresa May’s plan

We have gone through the looking-glass to a world in which Philip Hammond, the chancellor and leading Remainer, said this morning we would be better off outside the EU, while a new movement of Brexiteers against Brexit has sprung up to argue, in effect, that we might as well stay in the EU.[...]

The prime minister and her small band of loyalists, now reinforced by another Remainer-for-Brexit, Amber Rudd, will argue that the backstop would be “mutually uncomfortable”. The UK government wouldn’t like the European Court of Justice having a say over parts of the Northern Ireland economy; while EU27 governments think British, especially Northern Irish, companies would have an unfair advantage because they would not be bound enough by EU law. [...]

Then there is the option of postponing Brexit while we have another referendum. Johnson and Raab ought to vote for that, but they won’t, and I still don’t think there are enough pro-EU MPs who would back it if they could have May’s deal instead. Once a final-say referendum has been defeated, the only options left would be May’s deal or leaving without a deal, and we know which way most MPs ought to go on that, even if we can’t be sure they will.

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Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell: End of Space – Creating a Prison for Humanity

Space travel is the most exciting adventure for humanity, but in an irony of history we may stop ourselves from going into space the more we do it. With every rocket launched we are creating a deadly trap for mankind.

Deutsche Welle: Opinion: Gibraltar dispute shows the absurdity of Brexit

Sanchez does have a point. The future arrangement for the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is a prominent issue in ongoing Brexit talks and the deadline for reaching a final agreement has been postponed to 2020.

Yet, the border between the British peninsula of Gibraltar and Spain has not featured in the Brexit talks, and nobody knows what will happen to the 10,000 Spanish workers who commute to Gibraltar every day when Britain leaves the EU. [...]

It is possible that the border between the British peninsula and the Spanish mainland could be temporarily closed, like between 1969 and 1985. It is one of the reasons the vast majority of Gibraltar residents voted in favor of Britain remaining in the EU. [...]

The fight over Gibraltar illustrates the utter madness that is Brexit – irrespective of all the bureaucratic efforts being made to achieve a workable split. Leaders attending the upcoming EU summit on Sunday will wave through a Brexit plan that simply postpones reaching a final agreement on numerous contentious issues.

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